"What is that?" said Miss Faithful.

"It's nothing of ours, I'm pretty sure," said her sister, looking at it. "But come, if you've got what you want: let's go into the other room—it's cold here."

As they crossed the threshold, Miss Faithful started.

"What's the matter?" said her sister, though she well knew the reason. She too had heard the same long sigh felt the same breath of chill air.

"Why, it seemed as if something breathed close to my ear," said Miss Faithful, turning white; "and what's more," she continued, as they crossed the passage and entered the work-room, "I believe you heard it too, and that you've seen things in this house you haven't told me of."

"Well, child," said Miss Sophonisba in a subdued tone, "there are some queer things in this world, that's a fact—queerer than ever I thought till lately."

Miss Faithful did not press for an explanation: she went quietly on with her dressmaking, and her sister, hurried though she was about her work, set herself to examine the papers.

I remember seeing the original manuscript when I was a little girl, but it was unfortunately destroyed by an accident. My father, however, had copied part of it, and this copy is yet in my possession. Miss Sophonisba could make very little of the record, which related to scientific matters of which she was quite ignorant; and as the most important words were indicated by signs and figures, she was completely puzzled. The writer seemed to have been seeking in vain some particular result. She looked on through the dates of the year 1785, and saw here and there familiar names, and at last commenced reading at these words:

"June 3. This day took possession of my house. Busied in making arrangements. Shall build my own furnace. Am sure now that I am in the right way. Am determined no one shall come into the house."

Much followed which Miss Sophonisba could not understand, until, under the date of July 1, she found recorded:

"Being over at Neponset, looking for the plant witch-hazel, bethought myself to ask of the fellow they call Indian Will. Going to the little hovel he lives in, found him lying very ill with pleurisy. By the grace of God was able to help him. His wife told me where to find what I sought. To my surprise, discovered she knew much of its virtues. It may be these people have a knowledge of simples worth investigating.

"Sept. 3. No nearer my great end. My means fast growing less. Have borrowed from Jonathan Phelps, but the sum is but a drop for such a purpose. Most like some of these people, who complain of my price for the exercise of my skill, would give me threefold did they know what I work for, if they might share in its result. Yet I know I am in the right way. Should I die before I come to its end—Is Death the gate of knowledge?"

"Oct. 7. I advance just so far and no farther. Why is it that I see my path so plain just to the one point, and there it stops? How small our understanding of the endless mysteries around us! yet should something differing from every day's experience befall us, how quickly we speak of the supernatural!

"Oct. 29. No nearer, no nearer, and my money all but done. Took some of my books into Boston and offered them to sell. Refused, of course. How should they know their value? Have sent them to London. It was hard, but patience! patience!"

"Oct. 30. This day Indian Will brought the plants I wanted. Have bade him never to tell any one that he comes here. He only has ever entered. So far as I know, he has obeyed. He thinks me like one of his own powahs.

"Dec. 15. At last! I have passed the crisis, and without accident. How simple it seems, now that I know! It was my last bit of the essential metal: like from like. Each element has its seed in itself. The poor people say I have been good to them. Should success be final, I can indeed help mankind.

"Dec. 16. Last night, lifting the crucible from the furnace, spilled the liquor on the floor. Had I one particle more of the essential element! All was utterly lost: no one will lend to me.

"Dec. 18. What have I done that I should feel guilt? What was worth the life of such a useless creature to the interests of mankind? Why did he not trust my word and give me what I needed when I asked him? If he had not waked from his half-drunken sleep when I made the attempt, I would have given him threefold. I gave him his life once: why will not that atone? No one will know ever. I will devote my life to relieve distress. What is such as his, weighed in the balance with my purpose? It is strange that since then I have forgot the very essential thing in the process. I cannot read my own cipher in which I wrote it down; but it will come, it will come.

"Dec. 19. Have been all day trying to read the cipher in vain. Have lost the key, have forgotten the chief link. Until I can recall it the metal is useless. What if it should never come to me? This night went down to the Point. Threw into the sea the evidences of what I have brought to pass. The tide will soon wash them away.

"Dec. 20. Surely it is not meant this thing should be known. To-day a body came on shore, bruised and shattered, but said to be identified by those who should have known best. Now, no one will ever search this house. Twice to-day I have been to look at the place: nothing can be seen. Providence means I should live to finish my work—to complete that which I alone of mortal men have rightly understood. Why is it this link is broken off in my mind, and the cipher I myself wrote darker than before? Would the creature but have given it up quietly! It was in self-defence I struck at last. What was it to repent of? Some have held that such as he are not human—only animals a little more sagacious than the brutes about us.

"Dec. 22. Useless, useless! My memory fails me entirely. I have tried to go on in vain. What is this that is with me now these last two days?

"Dec. 25. Once I kept Christmas in another fashion than this. I had no guest but one I dare not name—

'Tumulum circumvolat umbra.'

"Dec. 27. To day it put out its hand: the soft wet fingers touched me. I will go out into the world, I will go out into the world. I will help those who are sick and in misery. Will it not be at peace then?"

Then the journal paused: there was no further entry till April 29, 1786:

"The girl, Hepsey Ball, died to-day. Her eyes were opened to see what I see all the hours in the day. I must go. I have not dared to leave, lest the awful Thing should be found in its hiding-place. They begin to press me for money. The house will go on the mortgage. Heard Phelps say if it was his he would drain the place in the cellar. To-day received fifty dollars from the sale of apparatus. Could not part with it before, thinking I should recover my lost knowledge, and should use it. Perhaps it will come back to me if I go away: it may be This will not follow me. I will drop the gold into the same place: if it is that it wants, it will rest. I cannot tell what I have done, my life is too precious. I only, of all men, have seen unveiled the mystery. I will leave This behind. When I am safe it may be found, and they will lay it to rest in the earth, if that is what it seeks. Then it will cease to persecute me with its step close at my back, its loathsome clinging touch."

Miss Sophonisba (my friend went on) looked up from her reading with such a strange expression that her sister was startled. "Put on your bonnet, Faithful," said she: "I'm going down to see the minister."

"What do you mean?" said Miss Faithful: "it's nearly nine o'clock."

"I don't care if it's midnight. I'm going to show these to him, and tell him what's happened here, and he may make what he can of it."

"Then you have seen something?" said Miss Faithful, turning pale.

Miss Sophonisba made a sign of assent; "I'll tell you all about it when we get there, but do come along now. You're work's done, and I'll take the bonnet with me and finish it there."

They lived at some distance from the parsonage, and the roads were in even worse condition than they are now. It was a tiresome walk, and Miss Faithful, clinging to her sister's side, was almost inclined to wish they had braved the terrors at home rather than ventured out into the dark. The clergyman was a middle-aged bachelor, a grandson of the Parson H—— mentioned by Mrs. T——. He heard Miss Sophonisba's story in silence, but without any sign of dissent. Faithful, in spite of her terror, could not but feel a mild degree of triumph in her sister's evident conviction that what she had seen was, to say the least, unaccountable.

Mr. H—— looked over the papers which had been found in the cupboard, and which Miss Sophonisba had brought with her. "This is undoubtedly Doctor Haywood's writing," he said at last. "I have a book purchased of him by my grandfather, and which has marginal notes in the same hand."

"What shall we do, sir?" asked Miss Sophonisba.

"If I were you I should leave the house as soon as possible. If there is anything in the air which induces such—" Mr. H—— hesitated for a word—"sensations as these, it would be better to go."

"Sensations!" said Miss Sophonisba, almost indignant. "I tell you I saw it myself; and what made the wet spot on Faithful's cape, and the rest?"

"I can't undertake to say, Miss T——; but if you like I will just come up to-morrow, and we will look into the matter a little. My cousin, Lieutenant V——, is here from his ship, and he will assist me. And meantime you had best stay here to-night: my sister will be very glad to see you."

Miss H—— was a particular friend of the sisters, but she could not but feel a little curious to know the object of their visit. Miss Sophonisba would have kept the matter to herself, but Miss Faithful, in her excitement, could not but tell the story of their experiences. Miss H——, however, was a discreet woman, and kept the tale to herself.

The next evening the clergyman, his cousin the lieutenant and Miss Sophonisba went quietly about dusk to the old house. They went down into the cellar, and the drag which the sailor had constructed brought up some bleached bones, and at the second cast a skeleton hand and a skull. As the latter was disengaged from the drag something fell glittering from it upon the cellar floor: two coins rolled to different corners. Mr. H——, picked them up. One was a Spanish piece, the other an English half guinea.

"Miss T——," said the clergyman in a low tone, "I will see that these poor relics are laid in the burial-ground; and then—really I think you had better leave the house."

Miss Sophonisba made no opposition.

The three ascended the cellar stairs, but as they entered the room they paused terror-stricken, for across the floor, making, as it passed, a wild gesture of despair, swept the Shape, living yet dead.

"What was that?" said the clergyman, who was the first to recover himself, "It," said Miss Sophonisba in a whisper.

"I have seen that face before," said the sailor. "Once on a stormy passage round the Cape we came upon a deserted wreck rolling helplessly upon the waves. I, then a young midshipman, went in the boat which was sent to board her. No living creature was there, but in the cabin we found a corpse, that of an old, old man. The look of the Thing was so awful that I could not bear it and hid my face. One of the sailors, however, took from the dead hand a paper covered with characters in cipher, which no one could read. This paper afterward fell into my possession, and I submitted it in vain to several experts, all of whom failed to read it. By an accident it was destroyed, and the secret, whatever it was, is hidden for ever; but the face of that corpse was the face I have just seen in this room."

CLARA F. GUERNSEY.



The Blood Seedling.



In a bit of green pasture that rose, gradually narrowing, to the tableland that ended in prairie, and widened out descending to the wet and willowy sands that border the Great River, a broad-shouldered young man was planting an apple tree one sunny spring morning when Tyler was President. The little valley was shut in on the south and east by rocky hills, patched with the immortal green of cedars and gay with clambering columbines. In front was the Mississippi, reposing from its plunge over the rapids, and idling down among the golden sandbars and the low, moist islands, which were looking their loveliest in their new spring dresses of delicate green.

The young man was digging with a certain vicious energy, forcing the spade into the black crumbling loam with a movement full of vigor and malice. His straight black brows were knitted till they formed one dark line over his deep-set eyes. His beard was not yet old enough to hide the massive outline of his firm, square jaw. In the set teeth, in the clouded face, in the half-articulate exclamations that shot from time to time from the compressed lips, it was easy to see that the thoughts of the young horticulturist were far from his work.

A bright young girl came down the path through the hazel thicket that skirted the hillside, and putting a plump brown hand on the topmost rail of the fence vaulted lightly over, and lit on the soft springy turf with a thud that announced a wholesome and liberal architecture. It is usually expected of poets and lovers that they shall describe the ladies of their love as so airy and delicate in structure that the flowers they tread on are greatly improved in health and spirits by the visitation. But not being a poet or in love, we must admit that there was no resurrection for the larkspurs and pansies upon which the little boots of Miss Susie Barringer landed. Yet she was not of the coarse peasant type, though her cheeks were so rosy as to cause her great heaviness of heart on Sunday mornings, and her blue lawn dress was as full as it could afford from shoulders to waist. She was a neat, hearty and very pretty country girl, with a slightly freckled face, and rippled brown hair, and astonished blue eyes, but perfectly self-possessed, and graceful as a young quail.

A young man's ears are quick to catch the rustling of a woman's dress. The flight of this plump bird in its fluttering blue plumage over the rail-fence caused our young man to look up from his spading: the scowl was routed from his brow by a sudden incursion of blushes, and his mouth was attacked by an awkward smile.

The young lady nodded, and was hurrying past. The scowl came back in force, and the smile was repulsed from the bearded mouth with great loss: "Miss Tudie, are you in a hurry?"

The lady thus addressed turned and said, in a voice that was half pert and half coaxing, "No particular hurry. Al, I've told you a dozen times not to call me that redicklis name."

"Why, Tudie, I hain't never called you nothing else sence you was a little one so high. You ort to know yer own name, and you give yerself that name when you was a yearling. Howsom-ever, ef you don't like it now, sence you've been to Jacksonville, I reckon I can call you Miss Susie—when I don't disremember."

The frank amende seemed to satisfy Miss Susie, for she at once interrupted in the kindest manner: "Never mind, Al Golyer: you can call me what you are a-mind to." Then, as if conscious of the feminine inconsistency, she changed the subject by asking, "What are you going to do with that great hole?—big enough to bury a fellow."

"I'm going to plant this here seedlin', that growed up in Colonel Blood's pastur', nobody knows how: belike somebody was eatin' an apple and throwed the core down-like. I'm going to plant a little orchard here next spring, but the colonel and me, we reckoned this one 'ud be too old by that time for moving, so I thought I'd stick it in now, and see what come out'n it. It's a powerful thrifty chunk of a saplin'."

"Yes. I speak for the first peck of apples off'n it. Don't forget. Good-morning."

"Hold on a minute, Miss Susan, twell I git my coat. I'll walk down a piece with you. I have got something to say to you."

Miss Susie turned a little red and a little pale. These occasions were not entirely unknown in her short experience of life. When young men in the country in that primitive period had something to say, it was something very serious and earnest. Allen Golyer was a good-looking, stalwart young farmer, well-to-do, honest, able to provide for a family. There was nothing presumptuous in his aspiring to the hand of the prettiest girl on Chaney Creek. In childhood he had trotted her to Banbury Cross and back a hundred times, beguiling the tedium of the journey with kisses and the music of bells. When the little girl was old enough to go to school, the big boy carried her books and gave her the rosiest apple out of his dinner-basket. He fought all her battles and wrote all her compositions; which latter, by the way, never gained her any great credit. When she was fifteen and he twenty he had his great reward in taking her twice a week during one happy winter to singing-school. This was the bloom of life—nothing before or after could compare with it. The blacking of shoes and brushing of stiff, electric, bristling hair, all on end with frost and hope, the struggling into the plate-armor of his starched shirt, the tying of the portentous and uncontrollable cravat before the glass, which was hopelessly dimmed every moment by his eager breath,—these trivial and vulgar details were made beautiful and unreal by the magic of youth and love. Then came the walk through the crisp, dry snow to the Widow Barringer's, the sheepish talk with the old lady while Susie "got on her things," and the long, enchanting tramp to the "deestrick school-house."

There is not a country-bred man or woman now living but will tell you that life can offer nothing comparable with the innocent zest of that old style of courting that was done at singing-school in the starlight and candlelight of the first half of our century. There are few hearts so withered and old but they beat quicker sometimes when they hear, in old-fashioned churches, the wailing, sobbing or exulting strains of "Bradstreet" or "China" or "Coronation;" and the mind floats down on the current of these old melodies to that fresh young day of hopes and illusions—of voices that were sweet, no matter how false they sang—of nights that were rosy with dreams, no matter what Fahrenheit said—of girls that blushed without cause, and of lovers who talked for hours about everything but love.

I know I shall excite the scorn of all the ingenuous youth of my time when I say that there was nothing that our superior civilization would call love making in those long walks through the winter nights. The heart of Allen Golyer swelled under his satin waistcoat with love and joy and devotion as he walked over the crunching roads with his pretty enslaver. But he talked of apples and pigs and the heathen and the teacher's wig, and sometimes ventured an illusion to other people's flirtations in a jocose and distant way; but as to the state of his own heart, his lips were sealed. It would move a blase smile on the downy lips of juvenile Lovelaces, who count their conquests by their cotillons, and think nothing of making a declaration in an avant-deux, to be told of young people spending several evenings of each week in the year together, and speaking no word of love until they were ready to name their wedding-day. Yet such was the sober habit of the place and time.

So there was no troth plighted between Allen and Susie, though the youth loved the maiden with all the energy of his fresh, unused nature, and she knew it very well. He never dreamed of marrying any other woman than Susie Barringer, and she sometimes tried a new pen by writing and carefully erasing the initials S.M.G., which, as she was christened Susan Minerva, may be taken as showing the direction of her thoughts.

If Allen Golyer had been less bashful or more enterprising, this history would never have been written; for Susie would probably have said Yes for want of anything better to say, and when she went to visit her aunt Abigail in Jacksonville she would have gone engaged, her finger bound with gold and her maiden meditations fettered by promises. But she went, as it was, fancy free, and there is no tinder so inflammable as the imagination of a pretty country girl of sixteen.

One day she went out with her easy-going aunt Abigail to buy ribbons, the Chancy Creek invoices not supplying the requirements of Jacksonville society. As they traversed the court-house square on their way to Deacon Pettybones' place, Miss Susie's vagrant glances rested on an iris of ribbons displayed in an opposition window. "Let's go in here," she said with the impetuous decision of her age and sex.

"We will go where you like, dear," said easy-going Aunt Abigail. "It makes no difference."

Aunt Abigail was wrong. It made the greatest difference to several persons whether Susie Barringer bought her ribbons at Simmons' or Pettybones' that day. If she had but known!

But, all unconscious of the Fate that beckoned invisibly on the threshold, Miss Susie tripped into "Simmons' Emporium" and asked for ribbons. Two young men stood at the long counter. One was Mr. Simmons, proprietor of the emporium, who advanced with his most conscientious smile: "Ribbons, ma'am? Yes, ma'am—all sorts, ma'am. Cherry, ma'am? Certingly, ma'am. Jest got a splendid lot from St. Louis this morning, ma'am. This way, ma'am."

The ladies were soon lost in the delight of the eyes. The voice of Mr. Simmons accompanied the feast of color, insinuating but unheeded.

The other young man approached: "Here is what you want, miss—rich and elegant. Just suits your style. Sets off your hair and eyes beautiful."

The ladies looked up. A more decided voice than Mr. Simmons'; whiter hands than Mr. Simmons' handled the silken bands; bolder eyes than the weak, pink-bordered orbs of Mr. Simmons looked unabashed admiration into the pretty face of Susie Barringer.

"Look here, Simmons, old boy, introduce a fellow."

Mr. Simmons meekly obeyed: "Mrs. Barringer, let me interduce you to Mr. Leon of St. Louis, of the house of Draper & Mercer."

"Bertie Leon, at your service," said the brisk young fellow, seizing Miss Susie's hand with energy. His hand was so much softer and whiter than hers that she felt quite hot and angry about it.

When they had made their purchases, Mr. Leon insisted on walking home with them, and was very witty and agreeable all the way. He had all the wit of the newspapers, of the concert-rooms, of the steamboat bars at his fingers' ends. In his wandering life he had met all kinds of people: he had sold ribbons through a dozen States. He never had a moment's doubt of himself. He never hesitated to allow himself any indulgence which would not interfere with business. He had one ambition in life—to marry Miss Mercer and get a share in the house. Miss Mercer was as ugly as a millionaire's tombstone. Mr. Bertie Leon—who, when his moustache was not dyed nor his hair greased, was really quite a handsome fellow—considered that the sacrifice he proposed to make in the interests of trade must be made good to him in some way. So, "by way of getting even," he made violent love to all the pretty eyes he met in his commercial travels—"to have something to think about after he should have found favor in the strabismic optics of Miss Mercer," he observed, disrespectfully.

Simple Susie, who had seen nothing of young men besides the awkward and blushing clodhoppers of Chaney Creek, was somewhat dazzled by the free-and-easy speech and manner of the hard-cheeked bagman. Yet there was something in his airy talk and point-blank compliments that aroused a faint feeling of resentment which she could scarcely account for. Aunt Abigail was delighted with him, and when he bowed his adieux at the gate in the most recent Planters'-House style, she cordially invited him to call—"to drop in any time: he must be lonesome so far from home."

He said he wouldn't neglect such a chance, with another Planters'-House bow.

"What a nice young man!" said Aunt Abigail.

"Awful conceited and not overly polite," said Susie as she took off her bonnet and went into a revel of bows and trimmings.

The oftener Albert Leon came to Mrs. Barringer's bowery cottage, the more the old lady was pleased with him and the more the young one criticised him, until it was plain to be seen that Aunt Abigail was growing tired of him and pretty Susan dangerously interested. But just at this point his inexorable carpet-bag dragged him off to a neighboring town, and Susie soon afterward went back to Chaney Creek.

Her Jacksonville hat and ribbons made her what her pretty eyes never could have done—the belle of the neighborhood. Non cuivis contingit adire Lutetiam, but to a village where no one has been at Paris the county-town is a shrine of fashion. Allen Golyer felt a vague sense of distrust chilling his heart as he saw Mr. Simmons' ribbons decking the pretty head in the village choir the Sunday after her return, and, spurred on by a nascent jealousy of the unknown, resolved to learn his fate without loss of time. But the little lady received him with such cool and unconcerned friendliness, talked so much and so fast about her visit, that the honest fellow was quite bewildered, and had to go home to think the matter over, and cudgel his dull wits to divine whether she was pleasanter than ever, or had drifted altogether out of his reach.

Allen Golyer was, after all, a man of nerve and decision. He wasted only a day or two in doubts and fears, and one Sunday afternoon, with a beating but resolute heart, he left his Sunday-school class to walk down to Crystal Glen and solve his questions and learn his doom. When he came in sight of the widow's modest house, he saw a buggy hitched by the gate.

"Dow Padgett's chestnut sorrel, by jing! What is Dow after out here?"

It is natural, if not logical, that young men should regard the visits of all other persons of their age and sex in certain quarters as a serious impropriety.

But it was not his friend and crony Dow Padgett, the liveryman, who came out of the widow's door, leading by the hand the blushing and bridling Susie. It was a startling apparition of the Southwestern dandy of the period—light hair drenched with bear's oil, blue eyes and jet-black moustache, an enormous paste brooch in his bosom, a waistcoat and trowsers that shrieked in discordant tones, and very small and elegant varnished boots. The gamblers and bagmen of the Mississippi River are the best-shod men in the world.

Golyer's heart sank within him as this splendid being shone upon him. But with his rustic directness he walked to meet the laughing couple at the gate, and said, "Tudie, I come to see you. Shall I go in and talk to your mother twell you come back?"

"No, that won't pay," promptly replied the brisk stranger. "We will be gone the heft of the afternoon, I reckon. This hoss is awful slow," he added with a wink of preternatural mystery to Miss Susie.

"Mr. Golyer," said the young lady, "let me interduce you to my friend, Mr. Leon."

Golyer put out his hand mechanically, after the cordial fashion of the West. But Leon nodded and said, "I hope to see you again." He lifted Miss Susie into the buggy, sprang lightly in, and went off with laughter and the cracking of his whip after Dow Padgett's chestnut sorrel.

The young farmer walked home desolate, comparing in his simple mind his own plain exterior with his rival's gorgeous toilet, his awkward address with the other's easy audacity, till his heart was full to the brim with that infernal compound of love and hate which is called jealousy, from which pray Heaven to guard you.

It was the next morning that Miss Susie vaulted over the fence where Allen Golyer was digging the hole for Colonel Blood's apple tree.

"Something middlin' particular," continued Golyer, resolutely.

"There is no use leaving your work," said Miss Barringer pluckily. "I will stay and listen."

Poor Allen began as badly as possible: "Who was that feller with you yesterday?"

"Thank you, Mr. Golyer—my friends ain't fellers! What's that to you, who he was?"

"Susie Barringer, we have been keeping company now a matter of a year. I have loved you well and true: I would have give my life to save you any little care or trouble. I never dreamed of nobody but you—not that I was half good enough for you, but because I did not know any better man around here. Ef it ain't too late, Susie, I ask you to be my wife. I will love you and care for you, good and true."

Before this solemn little speech was finished, Susie was crying and biting her bonnet-strings in a most undignified manner. "Hush, Al Golyer!" she burst out. "You mustn't talk so. You are too good for me. I am kind of promised to that fellow. I 'most wish I had never seen him."

Allen sprang to her and took her in his strong arms: she struggled free from him. In a moment the vibration which his passionate speech had produced in her passed away. She dried her eyes and said firmly enough, "It's no use, Al: we wouldn't be happy together. Good-bye! I shouldn't wonder if I went away from Chaney Creek before long."

She walked rapidly down to the river-road. Allen stood fixed and motionless, gazing at the light, graceful form until the blue dress vanished behind the hill, and leaned long on his spade, unconscious of the lapse of time.

When Susan reached her home she found Leon at the gate.

"Ah, my little rosebud! I came near missing you. I am going to Keokuk this morning, to be gone a few days. I stopped here a minute to give you something to keep for me till I come back."

"What is it?"

He took her chubby cheeks between his hands and laid on her cherry-ripe lips a keepsake which he never reclaimed.

She stood watching him from the gate until, as a clump of willows snatched him from her, she thought, "He will go right by where Al is at work. It would be jest like him to jump over the fence and have a talk with him. I'd like to hear it."

An hour or so later, as she sat and sewed in the airy little entry, a shadow fell upon her work, and as she looked up her startled eyes met the piercing glance of her discarded lover. A momentary ripple of remorse passed over her cheerful heart as she saw Allen's pale and agitated face. He was paler than she had ever seen him, with that ghastly pallor of weather-beaten faces. His black hair, wet with perspiration, clung clammily to his temples. He looked beaten, discouraged, utterly fatigued with the conflict of emotion. But one who looked closely in his eyes would have seen a curious stealthy, half-shaded light in them, as of one who, though working against hope, was still not without resolute will.

Dame Barringer, who had seen him coming up the walk, bustled in: "Good-morning, Allen. How beat out you do look! Now, I like a stiddy young man, but don't you think you run this thing of workin' into the ground?"

"Wail, maybe so," said Golyer with a weary smile—"leastways I've been a-running this spade into the ground all the morning, and—"

"You want buttermilk—that's your idee: ain't it, now?"

"Well, Mizzes Barringer, I reckon you know my failin's."

The good woman trotted off to the dairy, and Susie sewed demurely, waiting with some trepidation for what was to come next.

"Susie Barringer," said a low, husky voice which she could scarcely recognize as Golyer's, "I've come to ask pardon—not for nothing I've done, for I never did and never could do you wrong—but for what I thought for a while arter you left me this morning. It's all over now, but I tell you the Bad Man had his claws into my heart for a spell. Now it's all over, and I wish you well. I wish your husband well. If ever you git into any trouble where I can help, send for me: it's my right. It's the last favor I ask of you."

Susceptible Susie cried a little again. Allen, watching her with his ambushed eyes, said, "Don't take it to heart, Tudie. Perhaps there is better days in store for me yet."

This did not appear to comfort Miss Barringer in the least. She was greatly grieved when she thought she had broken a young man's heart: she was still more dismal at the slightest intimation that she had not. If any explanation of this paradox is required, I would observe, quoting a phrase much in vogue among the witty writers of the present age, that Miss Susie Barringer was "a very female woman."

So pretty Susan's rising sob subsided into a coquettish pout by the time her mother came in with the foaming pitcher of subacidulous nectar, and plied young Golyer with brimming beakers of it with all the beneficent delight of a Lady Bountiful.

"There, Mizzes Barringer! there's about as much as I can tote. Temperance in all things."

"Very well, then, you work less and play more. We never get a sight of you lately. Come in neighborly and play checkers with Tudie."

It was the darling wish of Mother Barringer's heart to see her daughter married and settled with "a stiddy young man that you knowed all about, and his folks before him." She had observed with great disquietude the brilliant avatar of Mr. Bertie Leon and the evident pride of her daughter in the bright-plumaged captive she had brought to Chaney Creek, the spoil of her maiden snare. "I don't more'n half like that little feller." (It is a Western habit to call a well-dressed man a "little feller." The epithet would light on Hercules Farnese if he should go to Illinois dressed as a Cocodes.) "No honest folks wears beard onto their upper lips. I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't a gamboller."

Allen Golyer, apparently unconscious in his fatigue of the cap which Dame Barringer was vicariously setting for him, walked away with his spade on his shoulder, and the good woman went systematically to work in making Susie miserable by sharp little country criticisms of her heart's idol.

Day after day wore on, and, to Dame Barringer's delight and Susie's dismay, Mr. Leon did not come.

"He is such a businessman," thought trusting Susan, "he can't get away from Keokuk. But he'll be sure to write." So Susie put on her sun-bonnet and hurried up to the post-office: "Any letters for me, Mr. Whaler?" The artful and indefinite plural was not disguise enough for Miss Susie, so she added, "I was expecting a letter from my aunt."

"No letters here from your aunt, nor your uncle, nor none of the tribe," said old Whaler, who had gone over with Tyler to keep his place, and so had no further use for good manners.

"I think old Tommy Whaler is an impudent old wretch," said Susie that evening, "and I won't go near his old post-office again." But Susie forgot her threat of vengeance the next day, and she went again, lured by family affection, to inquire for that letter which Aunt Abbie must have written. The third time she went, rummy old Whaler roared very improperly, "Bother your aunt! You've got a beau somewheres—that's what's the matter."

Poor Susan was so dazzled by this flash of clairvoyance that she hurried from that dreadful post-office, scarcely hearing the terrible words that the old gin-pig hurled after her: "And he's forgot you!—that's what's the matter."

Susie Barringer walked home along the river-road, revolving many things in her mind. She went to her room and locked her door by sticking a pen-knife over the latch, and sat down to have a good cry. Her faculties being thus cleared for action, she thought seriously for an hour. If you can remember when you were a school-girl, you know a great deal of solid thinking can be done in an hour. But we can tell you in a moment what it footed up. You can walk through the Louvre in a minute, but you cannot see it in a week.

Susan Barringer (sola, loquitur): "Three weeks yesterday. Yes, I s'pose it's so. What a little fool I was! He goes everywheres—says the same things to everybody, like he was selling ribbons. Mean little scamp! Mother seen through him in a minute. I'm mighty glad I didn't tell her nothing about it." [Fie, Susie! your principles are worse than your grammar.] "He'll marry some rich girl—I don't envy her, but I hate her—and I am as good as she is. Maybe he will come back—no, and I hope he won't;—and I wish I was dead!" (Pocket handkerchief.)

Yet in the midst of her grief there was one comforting thought—nobody knew of it. She had no confidante—she had not even opened her heart to her mother: these Western maidens have a fine gift of reticence. A few of her countryside friends and rivals had seen with envy and admiration the pretty couple on the day of Leon's arrival. But all their poisonous little compliments and questions had never elicited from the prudent Susie more than the safe statement that the handsome stranger was a friend of Aunt Abbie's, whom she had met at Jacksonville. They could not laugh at her: they could not sneer at gay deceivers and lovelorn damsels when she went to the sewing-circle. The bitterness of her tears was greatly sweetened by the consideration that in any case no one could pity her. She took such consolation from this thought that she faced her mother unflinchingly at tea, and baffled the maternal inquest on her "redness of eyes" by the school-girl's invaluable and ever-ready headache.

It was positively not until a week later, when she met Allen Golyer at choir-meeting, that she remembered that this man knew the secret of her baffled hopes. She blushed scarlet as he approached her: "Have you got company home, Miss Susie?"

"Yes—that is, Sally Withers and me came together, and—"

"No, that's hardly fair to Tom Fleming: three ain't the pleasantest company. I will go home with you."

Susie took the strong arm that was held out to her, and leaned upon it with a mingled feeling of confidence and dread as they walked home through the balmy night under the clear, starry heaven of the early spring. The air was full of the quickening breath of May.

Susie Barringer waited in vain for some signal of battle from Allen Golyer. He talked more than usual, but in a grave, quiet, protecting style, very different from his former manner of worshiping bashfulness. His tone had in it an air of fatherly caressing which was inexpressibly soothing to his pretty companion, tired and lonely with her silent struggle of the past month. When they came to her gate and he said good-night, she held his hand a moment with a tremulous grasp, and spoke impulsively: "Al, I once told you something I never told anybody else. I'll tell you something else now, because I believe I can trust you."

"Be sure of that, Susie Barringer."

"Well, Al, my engagement is broken off."

"I am sorry for you, Susie, if you set much store by him."

Miss Susie answered with great and unnecessary impetuosity, "I don't, and I am glad of it!" and then ran into the house and to bed, her cheeks all aflame at the thought of her indiscretion, and yet with a certain comfort in having a friend from whom she had no secrets.

I protest there was no thought of coquetry in the declaration which Susan Barringer blurted out to her old lover under the sympathetic starlight of the May heaven. But Allen Golyer would have been a dull boy not to have taken heart and hope from it. He became, as of old, a frequent and welcome visitor at Crystal Glen. Before long the game of chequers with Susie became so enthralling a passion that it was only adjourned from one evening to another. Allen's white shirts grew fringy at the edges with fatigue-duty, and his large hands were furry at the fingers with much soap. Susie's affectionate heart, which had been swayed a moment from its orbit by the irresistible attraction of Bertie Leon's diamond breastpin and city swagger, swung back to its ancient course under the mild influence of time and the weather and opportunity. So that Dame Barringer was not in the least surprised, on entering her little parlor one soft afternoon in that very May, to see the two young people economically occupying one chair, and Susie shouting the useless appeal, "Mother, make him behave!"

"I never interfere in young folks' matters, especially when they're going all right," said the motherly old soul, kissing "her son Allen" and trotting away to dry her happy tears.

I am almost ashamed to say how soon they were married—so soon that when Miss Susan went with her mother to Keokuk to buy a wedding-garment, she half expected to find, in every shop she entered, the elegant figure of Mr. Leon leaning over the counter. But the dress was bought and made, and worn at wedding and in-fair and in a round of family visits among the Barringer and Golyer kin, and carefully laid away in lavender when the pair came back from their modest holiday and settled down to real life on Allen's prosperous farm; and no word of Bertie Leon ever came to Mrs. Golyer to trouble her joy. In her calm and busy life the very name faded from her tranquil mind. These wholesome country hearts do not bleed long. In that wide-awake country eyes are too useful to be wasted in weeping. My dear Lothario Urban us, those peaches are very sound and delicious, but they will not keep for ever. If you do not secure them to-day, they will go to some one else, and in no case, as the Autocrat hath said with authority, can you stand there "mellering 'em with your thumb."

There was no happier home in the county, and few finer farms. The good sense and industry of Golyer and the practical helpfulness of his wife found their full exercise in the care of his spreading fields and growing orchards. The Warsaw merchants fought for his wheat, and his apples were known in St. Louis. Mrs. Golyer, with that spice of romance which is hidden away in every woman's heart, had taken a special fancy to the seedling apple tree at whose planting she had so intimately assisted. Allen shared in this, as in all her whims, and tended and nursed it like a child. In time he gave up the care of his orchard to other hands, but he reserved this seedling for his own especial coddling. He spaded and mulched and pruned it, and guarded it in the winter from rodent rabbits and in summer from terebrant grubs. It was not ungrateful. It grew a noble tree, producing a rich and luscious fruit, with a deep scarlet satin coat, and a flesh tinged as delicately as a pink seashell. The first peck of apples was given to Susie with great ceremony, and the next year the first bushel was carried to Colonel Blood, the Congressman. He was loud in his admiration, as the autumn elections were coming on: "Great Scott, Golyer! I'd rather give my name to a horticultooral triumph like that there than be Senator."

"You've got your wish, then, colonel," said Golyer. "Me and my wife have called that tree The Blood Seedling sence the day it was transplanted from your pastur'."

It was the pride and envy of the neighborhood. Several neighbors asked for scions and grafts, but could do nothing with them.

"Fact is," said old Silas Withers, "those folks that expects to raise good fruit by begging graffs, and then layin' abed and readin' newspapers, will have a good time waitin'. Elbow-grease is the secret of the Blood Seedlin', ain't it, Al?"

"Well, I reckon, Squire Withers, a man never gits anything wuth havin' without a tussle for it; and as to secrets, I don't believe in them, nohow."

A square-browed, resolute, silent, middle-aged man, who loved his home better than any amusement, regular at church, at the polls, something richer every Christmas than he had been on the New Year's preceding—a man whom everybody liked and few loved much—such had Allen Golyer grown to be.

* * * * *

If I have lingered too long over this colorless and commonplace picture of rural Western life, it is because I have felt an instinctive reluctance to recount the startling and most improbable incident which fell one night upon this quiet neighborhood, like a thunderbolt out of blue sky. The story I must tell will be flatly denied and easily refuted. It is absurd and fantastic, but, unless human evidence is to go for nothing when it testifies of things unusual, the story is true.

At the head of the rocky hollow through which Chaney Creek ran to the river, lived the family who gave the brook its name. They were among the early pioneers of the county. In the squatty yellow stone house the present Chaney occupied his grandfather had stood a siege from Black Hawk all one summer day and night, until relieved by the garrison of Fort Edward. The family had not grown with the growth of the land. Like many others of the pioneers, they had shown no talent for keeping abreast of the civilization whose guides and skirmishers they had been. In the progress of a half century they had sold, bit by bit, their section of land, which kept intact would have proved a fortune. They lived very quietly, working enough to secure their own pork and hominy, and regarding with a sort of impatient scorn every scheme of public or private enterprise that passed under their eyes.

The elder Chaney had married, some years before, at the Mormon town of Nauvoo, the fair-haired daughter of a Swedish mystic, who had come across the sea beguiled by dreams of a perfect theocracy, and who on arriving at the city of the Latter-Day Saints had died, broken-hearted from his lost illusions.

The only dowry that Seraphita Neilsen brought her husband, besides her delicate beauty and her wide blue eyes, was a full set of Swedenborg's later writings in English. These became the daily food of the solitary household. Saul Chaney would read the exalted rhapsodies of the Northern seer for hours together, without the first glimmer of their meaning crossing his brain. But there was something in the majesty of their language and the solemn roll of their poetical development that irresistibly impressed and attracted him. Little Gershom, his only child, sitting at his feet, would listen in childish wonder to the strange things his silent, morose and gloomy father found in the well-worn volumes, until his tired eyelids would fall at last over his pale, bulging eyes.

As he grew up his eyes bulged more and more: his head seemed too large for his rickety body. He pored over the marvelous volumes until he knew long passages by heart, and understood less of them than his father—which was unnecessary. He looked a little like his mother, but while she in her youth had something of the faint and flickering beauty of the Boreal Lights, poor Gershom never could have suggested anything more heavenly than a foggy moonlight. When he was fifteen he went to the neighboring town of Warsaw to school. He had rather heavy weather among the well-knit, grubby-knuckled urchins of the town, and would have been thoroughly disheartened but for one happy chance. At the house where he boarded an amusement called the "Sperrit Rappin's" was much in vogue. A group of young folks, surcharged with all sorts of animal magnetism, with some capacity for belief and much more for fun, used to gather about a light pine table every evening, and put it through a complicated course of mystical gymnastics. It was a very good-tempered table: it would dance, hop or slam at the word of command, or, if the exercises took a more intellectual turn, it would answer any questions addressed to it in a manner not much below the average capacity of its tormentors.

Gershom Chaney took all this in solemn earnest. He was from the first moment deeply impressed. He lay awake whole nights, with his eyes fast closed, in the wildest dreams. His school-hours were passed in trancelike contemplation. He cared no more for punishment than the fakeer for his self-inflicted tortures. He longed for the coming of the day when he could commune in solitude with the unfleshed and immortal. This was the full flowering of those seeds of fantasy that had fallen into his infant mind as he lay baking his brains by the wide fire in the old stone house at the head of the hollow, while his father read, haltingly, of the wonders of the invisible world.

But, to his great mortification, he saw nothing, heard nothing, experienced nothing but in the company of others. He must brave the ridicule of the profane to taste the raptures which his soul loved. His simple, trusting faith made him inevitably the butt of the mischievous circle. They were not slow in discovering his extreme sensibility to external influences. One muscular, black-haired, heavy-browed youth took especial delight in practicing upon him. The table, under Gershom's tremulous hands, would skip like a lamb at the command of this Thomas Fay.

One evening, Tom Fay had a great triumph. They had been trying to get the "medium"—for Gershom had reached that dignity—to answer sealed questions, and had met with indifferent success. Fay suddenly approached the table, scribbled a phrase, folded it and tossed it, doubled up, before Gershom; then leaned over the table, staring at his pale, unwholesome face with all the might of his black eyes.

Chaney seized the pencil convulsively and wrote, "Balaam!"

Fay burst into a loud laugh and said, "Read the question?"

It was, "Who rode on your grandfather's back?"

This is a specimen of the cheap wit and harmless malice by which poor Gershom suffered as long as he stayed at school. He was never offended, but was often sorely perplexed, at the apparent treachery of his unseen counselors. He was dismissed at last from the academy for utter and incorrigible indolence. He accepted his disgrace as a crown of martyrdom, and went proudly home to his sympathizing parents.

Here, with less criticism and more perfect faith, he renewed the exercise of what he considered his mysterious powers. His fastings and vigils, and want of bodily movement and fresh air, had so injured his health as to make him tenfold more nervous and sensitive than ever. But his faintings and hysterics and epileptic paroxysms were taken more and more as evidences of his lofty mission. His father and mother regarded him as an oracle, for the simple reason that he always answered just as they expected. A curious or superstitious neighbor was added from time to time to the circle, and their reports heightened the half-uncanny interest with which the Chaney house was regarded.

It was on a moist and steamy evening of spring that Allen Golyer, standing by his gate, saw Saul Chaney slouching along in the twilight, and hailed him: "What news from the sperrits, Saul?"

"Nothing for you, Al Golyer," said Saul, gloomily. "The god of this world takes care of the like o' you."

Golyer smiled, as a prosperous man always does when his poorer neighbors abuse him for his luck, and rejoined: "I ain't so fortunate as you think for, Saul Chaney. I lost a Barksher pig yesterday: I reckon I must come up and ask Gershom what's come of it."

"Come along, if you like. It's been a long while sence you've crossed my sill. But I'm gitting to be quite the style. Young Lawyer Marshall is a-coming up this evening to see my Gershom."

Before Mr. Golyer started he filled a basket, "to make himself welcome and pay for the show," with the reddest and finest fruit of his favorite apple tree. His wife followed him to the gate and kissed him—a rather unusual attention among Western farmer-people. Her face, still rosy and comely, was flushed and smiling: "Al, do you know what day o' the year it is?"

"Nineteenth of Aprile?"

"Yes; and twenty years ago to-day you planted the Blood Seedlin' and I give you the mitten!" She turned and went into the house, laughing comfortably.

Allen walked slowly up the hollow to the Chaney house, and gave the apples to Seraphita and told her their story. A little company was assembled—two or three Chaney Creek people, small market-gardeners, with eyes the color of their gooseberries and hands the color of their currants; Mr. Marshall, a briefless young barrister from Warsaw, with a tawny friend, who spoke like a Spaniard.

"Take seats, friends, and form a circle o' harmony," said Saul Chaney. "The me'jum is in fine condition: he had two fits this arternoon."

Gershom looked shockingly ill and weak. He reclined in a great hickory arm-chair, with his eyes half open, his lips moving noiselessly. All the persons present formed a circle and joined hands.

The moment the circle was completed by Saul and Seraphita, who were on either side of their son, touching his hands, an expression of pain and perplexity passed over his pale face, and he began to writhe and mutter.

"He's seein' visions," said Saul.

"Yes, too many of 'em," said Gershom, querulously. "A boy in a boat, a man on a shelf, and a man with a spade—all at once: too many. Get me a pencil. One at a time, I tell you—one at a time!"

The circle broke up, and a table was brought, with writing materials. Gershom grasped a pencil, and said, with imperious and feverish impatience, "Come on, now, and don't waste the time of the shining ones."

An old woman took his right hand. He wrote with his left very rapidly an instant, and threw her the paper, always with his eyes shut close.

Old Mrs. Scritcher read with difficulty, "A boy in a boat—over he goes;" and burst out in a piteous wail, "Oh, my poor little Ephraim! I always knowed it."

"Silence, woman!" said the relentless medium.

"Mr. Marshall," said Saul, "would you like a test?"

"No, thank you," said the young gentleman. "I brought my friend, Mr. Baldassano, who, as a traveler, is interested in these things."

"Will you take the medium's hand, Mr. What's-your-name?"

The young foreigner took the lean and feverish hand of Gershom, and again the pencil flew rapidly over the paper. He pushed the manuscript from him and snatched his hand away from Baldassano. As the latter looked at what was written, his tawny cheek grew deadly pale. "Dios mio!" he exclaimed to Marshall. "This is written in Castilian!"

The two young men retired to the other end of the room and read by the tallow candle the notes scrawled on the paper. Baldassano translated: "A man on a shelf—table covered with bottles beside him: man's face yellow as gold: bottles tumble over without being touched."

"What nonsense is that?" said Marshall.

"My brother died of yellow fever at sea last year."

Both the young men became suddenly very thoughtful, and observed with great interest the result of Golyer's "test." He sat by Gershom, holding his hand tightly, but gazing absently into the dying blaze of the wide chimney. He seemed to have forgotten where he was: a train of serious thought appeared to hold him completely under its control. His brows were knit with an expression of severe almost fierce determination. At one moment his breathing was hard and thick—a moment after hurried and broken.

All this while the fingers of Gershom were flying rapidly over the paper, independently of his eyes, which were sometimes closed, and sometimes rolling as if in trouble.

A wind which had been gathering all the evening now came moaning up the hollow, rattling the window-blinds, and twisting into dull complaint the boughs of the leafless trees. Its voice came chill and cheerless into the dusky room, where the fire was now glimmering near its death, and the only sounds were those of Gershom's rushing pencil, the whispering of Marshall and his friend, and old Mother Scritcher feebly whimpering in her corner. The scene was sinister. Suddenly, a rushing gust blew the door wide open.

Golyer started to his feet, trembling in every limb, and looking furtively over his shoulder out into the night. Quickly recovering himself, he turned to resume his place. But the moment he dropped Gershom's hand, the medium had dropped his pencil, and had sunk back in his chair in a deep and deathlike slumber. Golyer seized the sheet of paper, and with the first line that he read a strange and horrible transformation was wrought in the man. His eyes protruded, his teeth chattered, he passed his hand over his head mechanically, and his hair stood up like the bristles on the back of a swine in rage. His face was blotched white and purple. He looked piteously about him for a moment, then crumpling the paper in his hand, cried out in a hoarse, choking voice, "Yes, it's a fact: I done it. It's no use denying on't.. Here it is, in black and white. Everybody knows it: ghosts come spooking around to tattle about it. What's the use of lying? I done it."

He paused, as if struck by a sudden recollection, then burst into tears and shook like a tree in a high wind. In a moment he dropped on his knees, and in that posture crawled over to Marshall: "Here, Mr. Marshall—here's the whole story. For God's sake, spare my wife and children all you can. Fix my little property all right for 'em, and God bless you for it!" Even while he was speaking, with a quick revulsion of feeling he rose to his feet, with a certain return of his natural dignity, and said, "But they sha'n't take me! None of my kin ever died that way: I've got too much sand in my gizzard to be took that way. Good-bye, friends all!"

He walked deliberately out into the wild, windy night.

Marshall glanced hurriedly at the fatal paper in his hand. It was full of that capricious detail with which in reverie we review scenes that are past. But a line here and there clearly enough told the story—how he went out to plant the apple tree; how Susie came by and rejected him; how he passed into the power of the devil for the time; how Bertie Leon came by and spoke to him, and patted him on the shoulder, and talked about city life; how he hated him and his pretty face and his good clothes; how they came to words and blows, and he struck him with his spade, and he fell into the trench, and he buried him there at the roots of the tree.

Marshall, following his first impulse, thrust the paper into the dull red coals. It flamed for an instant, and flew with a sound like a sob up the chimney.

They hunted for Golyer all night, but in the morning found him lying as if asleep, with the peace of expiation on his pale face, his pruning-knife in his, heart, and the red current of his life tinging the turf with crimson around the roots of the Blood Seedling.

JOHN HAY.



The Marquis.



Mrs. Ruggles lived near Crawfish Creek. Crawfish Creek ran near Thompson City. Thompson City was in a Western State, but now is in a Middle one. It was always in the midst of a great country—accepting local testimony and a rank growth of corn and politicians as the tests of greatness. The earth there was monotonously parched in summer, and monotonously muddy at all other times. The forests were gigantic, the air carbonic, and when the citizens wished to give Thompson City the highest commendation, they did so by saying that "fevernagur" was worse in some other places.

In the parlor of Mrs. Ruggles, which was also her kitchen and dining-hall, hung a frame containing a seven-by-nine mirror, which was the frame's excuse for being, although a compartment above and one below held squares of glass covered with paint instead of mercury. The lower one was colored like the contents of a wash-tub after a liberal use of indigo; and in the centre was a horizontal stroke of red, surmounted by a perpendicular dash of white, intersected by an oblique line of black—all of which represented a red boat, with a white sail and black spar, making an endless voyage across the lake of indigo. The black crosses in the sky were birds. The black lines on the left were bulrushes. And among these bulrushes a certain gloomy little object was either a Hebrew prophet or a muskrat.

Above the mirror was painted a long-tailed coat, from behind which extended a hand holding a bell-crowned hat, to whose scarlet lining the holder seemed inviting the spectator's particular attention. There were also a pair of legs and boots, a heavy shock of hair, a labyrinth of neckcloth and a florid human face. Under the boots were the words,

MARQUIS DE LA FAYETTE.

And the beholder was ever in doubt whether the marquis was trying to stand exclusively upon this title or was unconsciously trampling it into the ground.

Mrs. Ruggles admired this picture. Her knowledge of French was not great, but her ear was delicate; and thinking the words "sounded handsome," she had deliberately conferred them in full on her first-born. When in good-humor she was content with calling him "Marquis-dee." In fact, it was only when chasing him into the street with a lilac bush in her hand that she insisted on addressing him by his full name. At such times, between each flourish of the lilac bush and each yell of the young nobleman, she pronounced with significant fullness, with fearful exactness, the handsome-sounding name of Marquis de la Fayette Ruggles. His playmates, however, had not the delicate ear of the mother, and as the son had brown specks on his face, he was popularly known as "Frecky Rug."

Mrs. Ruggles and her late husband were pioneers in the Crawfish Valley. Subsequent settlers knew little, and apparently cared less, about her. They knew, however, that she had been a Peables, and that Peables blood was still doing its duty in her veins. And from her independence and reserve they argued that the Peableses must have been "high up"—at least in the estimation of Mrs. Ruggles. After Mr. Ruggles had been overcome by malaria in clearing the creek bottoms the pride of the Peables blood had sustained her in a long, brave fight with circumstances.

It was while he lay one night upon his deathbed, mistaking a watching neighbor for his wife, that he started up, saying, "Becky, if I could prove it to you afore I died!"

"Out of his head," was the quiet remark of Mrs. Ruggles to the watching neighbor by the bedside. There was no further sign of delirium. That exclamation of the dying Mr. Ruggles was a mystery to the women of Crawfish Creek, and remains so to this day.

It may be that the pride of Mrs. Ruggles was in excess of her wisdom. It may be if that pride had been a little more respected by the irreverent Crawfish settlers, they would not have had occasion to wonder, as they did wonder, how a heart so true, an honesty so stoical, a discrimination so acute could exist with an independence so absurd, a mind so uncultured, a sense of dignity so ridiculous as were found united in her character. It may be that the Peables blood was worthy of receiving honor as great as the ridicule it did receive. It may be if the world had known the Peableses it would have been as proud of them as she was.

She was a person of scrupulous neatness, careful never to be seen by strangers except in a tidy dress, and with her hair in a Grecian knot, gracefully secured by a leather string and a wooden peg. "Weak creepings" were her main reliance in the way of disease. She was also troubled, at times, with a "fullness of the head." In addition, there were other times when her right side "felt separate." But she seldom complained of anything belonging to herself. Even her maladies, she took pleasure in knowing, were very different from those enjoyed by certain other women. Unwilling to be too familiar with any one baser than a Ruggles, she usually dined, as she lived, alone with her noble son.

On a certain summer evening she stirred her tea a long time in silence. She stirred it vigorously, creating a maelstrom inside her cup, where, very like a whale in the story-books, a little crust of bread disappeared and reappeared, and sailed round and round as if very much perplexed. Then she unconsciously reversed the current of the maelstrom, sending the baked and buttered whale to the bottom.



"I never see that air Miller, no odds how well I be," she remarked mechanically to the tea-pot, "but what I feel weak creepin's come over me. He puts dye-stuff on his baird. An' when a man's whiskers is gray an' his head keeps black, it's a sign he uses his jaw more'n he does his brains. An' that yaller-headed doll-baby o' his'n—the peert thing:—I'll lay fifty cents she never washed a dish. To think o' her sayin' a thing like that about Markis-dee!—an' there's more o' the Peables in him to-day—But I s'pose she don't know no better." And Mrs. Ruggles rose from the table, while the corner of her apron made a sudden journey to the corner of her eye. It was evident her moral nature had received a wound that rankled.

A year before this time the marquis and his playmates had watched several vigorous fellows plant a theodolite on the bank of Crawfish Creek, very much as the natives must have watched the Spaniards plant their first cross on San Salvador. The contract for grading the new railway bed was in the hands of a stranger named Miller, who was said to have known better days, and in the time of his prosperity had been thought a proper person to be called Colonel. He was a bluff man of forty years, who appeared to have known both the ups and downs of life, and whose determination to wear a black beard was equaled only by its determination to be gray. Rumor said that he had been a railroad president, that he made and spent vast sums of money, and that his home was somewhere in the East.

His only child, Alice, ten or twelve years old, bright, fair, full of animal spirits, who was indulged to the last degree by the roughly generous colonel, sometimes accompanied him about the half-developed country, searching for strange birds and blossoms in the woods or watching demurely the laborers ply their picks and shovels while he inspected their work.

The two rode almost daily between Thompson City and the line of excavation, passing the house of Mrs. Ruggles and a cool spring by the roadside near it, whence that lady had obtained the water which made the tea which was stirred into the maelstrom which has been described. While obtaining it, clad in her working garb, the patter of hoofs and a clear girlish laugh—sweet as the carol of a meadow lark—came ringing along the road. As the colonel and Alice halted to let her high-mettled pony and his heavier Morgan drink, Mrs. Ruggles, who could not otherwise escape observation, with becoming pride and modesty stepped behind the thick willows, leaving the marquis with a pail of water between his legs and a bunch of mottled feathers in his hand.

He stood dumb before the lovely girl, with her face sparkling from exercise and enjoyment, and her golden hair escaping from its prison of blue ribbons. While the horses drank she espied a cluster of cool violets brightening the damp grass near the spring. The marquis had presence of mind enough left to step forward and pluck them. Her "Thank you!" added greatly to his embarrassment, which he expressed by vigorously twisting the mottled feathers.

"What bird are those from?" asked Alice.

The question so increased his embarrassment that now the marquis could express it only by chewing his cap, and she smilingly waited a moment for the composure of the young naturalist's feelings.

"She was a low, chunky hen," said he, at length—"she was a low, chunky hen, an' she laid a hundred an' seven eggs, an' then she had spazzums an' whirled roun' till she died."

A burst of irrepressible laughter escaped Alice, with the exclamation, "Did anybody ever see such a boy?" as she and her father rode away. And those were the exceptionable words concerning her son which so rankled that evening in the heart of Mrs. Ruggles.

The marquis gazed with hungry eyes after the airy little figure as it dashed down the unlovely, worm-fenced road. The golden hair, overflowing its boundaries of blue ribbon, was more glorious to him than the golden sunshine overflowing the blue sky. They met no more at the spring, but several times a week, from a respectful distance, he watched her riding by. From Thompson City to the little log bridge over Crawfish Creek the road lay for four miles through heavy woods. Then came cleared fields, and soon the house of Mrs. Ruggles.

So the summer days went by. The season was waning, the grading was almost done, and soon the contractor would be elsewhere. Then came one particularly warm and sultry day. The screams of locusts everywhere suggested that they were frying. The colonel, riding once more slowly out toward the workmen with his daughter, was near the middle of the forest. The trees on either hand were tall, and the road was so straight and narrow that the sunlight scarcely touched it. The marquis, in the top of a tall chestnut that overhung the road near the edge of the wood, was overhauling a nest of flying squirrels—perhaps in the hope of finding mottled feathers on their wings. From his elevation he could see for a great distance down the level, dusty road between the trees, and far across the surrounding country.

The sun did not shine bright, yet no cloud was in the sky. The atmosphere, thick, oppressive, opaque, veiled the horizon with strange gloom. Not a leaf could stir in the vast forest. Not a dimple nor the semblance of a current broke the surface of the sluggish creek. Not a sound, save the interminable frying of the locusts.

The colonel slackened his pace, surprised that his horse should so soon begin to drip and pant—Alice, familiar with the road, in the mean time riding a mile ahead. The marquis clung to the topmost branches, looking at the still sky far above him, the still stream far below him, the still tree-tops far around him, till he caught a glimpse of the only interesting object to be seen—a black pony bearing its usual burden, if Alice Miller could be called a burden, and pacing leisurely up the road beneath him. He gazed as far as the palisade of trees permitted, but her father was not yet in sight.

Suddenly, in the west, a single vein of lightning darted down the sky. A few trees shuddered as if to shake the gathering shadows from their bosoms. Then tenfold stillness. A bird flew past with a scream of terror, the marquis looking in vain to see a hawk pursuing it. The distant moan of a cow came from the fields. Not another sound, it seemed, was in the world.

In an instant the south-west was black. A strange, remote murmur smote the colonel's ear. Overhead he could see but a strip of hot, hazy sky. Had he seen the whole heavens, he could have done nothing but go on. Quickly the murmur became an awful muttering, then a deafening roar. The clatter, the rush, the crash of a tornado were behind him. The groans of the very earth were about him. The darkness of twilight was upon him. Alice and Death were before him. A cloudy demon, towering high as the heavens, in whose path nothing could live, was striding near and nearer.

Farm-houses were overthrown. Trees were twisted off from their roots and torn to pieces. Wild animals and birds were dashed to death. Streams were emptied of their waters. Human beings and horses and cattle were lifted into the air, hurled hither and thither and thrown dead upon the earth.

The whirlwind was following the line of the road! Colonel Miller had no opportunity to see this, nor could he ride aside from that line if he chose. He could but cry aloud, "My darling! O God! Alice!" and lash his horse forward. The high, close forest would keep the wind from lifting his horse from the ground or himself from the saddle. But the great trees crashed like thunder behind him. Their fragments whirled above him. Their branches fell before him. The limb of a huge oak grazed his face, crushed his horse, and both rolled to the ground, blinded with dust, imprisoned within a barricade of splintered trunks and shattered tree-tops.

The marquis, from his high lookout, saw, before any one else, the approaching tornado, and, descending like a flash, he yet noted its direction. As Alice reached the foot of his tree he was on the ground, had seized the pony's mane, was half seated and half clinging in front of her, had snatched the reins from her hand, and was urging the frightened animal to its utmost speed. Overcome with terror and confusion, Alice clung instinctively to the saddle and to him, without hearing his hurried advice to "stick like a old burdock."

They shot like an arrow up the road. The noise of the tempest was audible. Closer it was coming, crushing, rending, annihilating all before it. The way grew darker. The terrified pony scarce touched the ground. His only will was to go forward, and he still obeyed a firm use of the bit. But who could hope to outrun a hurricane? Twelve miles an hour against eighty! The marquis heeded nothing. Not far behind, the road was but a slash of fallen, writhing tree-tops. The sweat dropped from his face. He dared not look behind.

They reached it—the lane, by the log bridge, running at right angles to the road—and in a moment, behind them, that lane was choked with whirling debris.

But in that moment they had cleared the track of the whirlwind. For the first time Alice comprehended the conduct of the marquis. For the first time he turned to see. A quarter of a mile each side the road the hurricane had carried complete desolation. But after passing the heavy timber it had veered several degrees, and was sparing the house of Mrs. Ruggles.

With a white face she met them at the gate. A word of explanation from the marquis—an ejaculation of mental anguish from the girl. Two fugitive tie-choppers from the woods turned back to find the colonel's body. Mrs. Ruggles, carrying Alice in her arms to the door—the yaller-headed doll-baby that never washed a dish—did what she could to soothe her, but did it as silently as possible.

Mrs. Ruggles intercepted the returning tie-choppers in the lane. A look of eager joy was in their faces. The bruised colonel, assisted to the threshold, sank into the big arm-chair, and Alice was in his arms. Mrs. Ruggles did not see their meeting, not at all. No, her back was toward them, but the corner of her apron made another journey to the corner of her eye as the father folded his lost child once more to his heart.

His desire to express his gratitude to Mrs. Ruggles and her boy was equaled only by her fears that he would do so. As a last resort he called the marquis to him, and, while a tear stood on his rough cheek, drew a handful of money from his pocket. But a bony hand appeared majestically between them, and a voice said, "Not by no means. We're not them kind o' persons. Markis-dee, put away the camfire."

Then a rickety gig rattled up to the gate: "Contusion—severe—no danger—there!—be lame a while—so!—the other bandage—bridge gone—creek half dry—bend your leg—so!—current turned up-stream—now the shoulder—not strange Crawfish Creek should run backward—he! he!" And the rickety gig rattled merrily off in search of broken bones.

Alice, meeting the marquis outside the door, approached him in a way that made him tremble. What was said will never be known, but she placed her white little hand upon his shoulder, the golden head bowed for a moment and her sweet lips touched his sunburnt face.

By remaining quiet that night the colonel would be able to get back to Thompson City in the morning. Before nine o'clock he was at rest in the bed-room. A couch for Alice had been prepared in the same room. In the other—kitchen, parlor and dining-hall—a blanket was thrown down for the marquis, and two chairs fixed for the bed of Mrs. Ruggles. Before retiring, however, she sat down at her lonely table, where, notwithstanding the tea she drank to keep them off, an unusual number of weak creepings came over her.

"I couldn't help it," was all she said to the tea-pot. Whether she referred to the tornado, or her kindness to the sufferers, or to the manner of rendering the kindness, no one knows. That was all she said to the tea-pot, but to her son, who sat for a while beside her, she spoke in a low tone: "Markis-dee, you could never c'verse with her. You're better'n she is. Put her out o' yer head. She laughed at ye."

"But she kissed me wi' tears in 'er eyes afterward," was his answer as he turned toward his bed on the floor.

An hour later the tea was exhausted, but Mrs. Ruggles yet sat at her lonely table, as still as the sleepers around her. The clock struck ten: she nervously drew a soiled paper from her bosom. Eleven: she rose with hesitation and set the tallow candle behind the door. Then she softly entered the bed-room and stood before the window where Alice lay. The sky was clear again. The moon shone on the face and form of the sleeping girl, making softer their graceful lines, richer the shadows in the golden hair, tenderer the tint of cheek and lip.

She stepped again into the shade and stole to the colonel's bedside. His disturbed mind had turned backward over the path of life from the sudden death escaped, and, sleeping or waking, his memory had been busy with the people and events of other days.

"John Miller!" she said, in a suppressed tone. He started. "John Miller, I know ye. Common name—I wa'n't sure afore to-day. When you pulled that money out o' yer pocket I see that in yer face that satisfied me. It's fer the good name o' the dead I've come. Elseways I never'd ha' troubled ye." The astonished colonel shifted his position painfully, prepared to speak or to listen. "There yer girl lies in the light o' heaven. Nex' room my boy lies in the shadder an' dark. He don't know, an' he never will. John Miller, I married as honest an' as good a man as ever you see. Folks has come to me in sickness an' trouble, an' gone behin' my back to talk. Some said I done right to take him—'twas Christian in me. Some said I must ha' been a fool. Some said we wa'n't married a-tall. Wasn't I a Peables? Didn't I know 'twould be flung up to my face? Wasn't I prouder'n any on 'em?"

A moment's confusion and doubting of senses: then, as the suppressed voice went on, the colonel remembered. A dozen years ago; before he had meddled with railroads; back in the old town; soon after taking his father's shop; he was plaintiff; Ruggles worked in the first room; Porter's testimony; Becky Peables the sweetheart of both; burglary; loss trifling; George Ruggles, for one year; came back and married when released; went West. The old case had scarce crossed his mind for years.

"Yes, you sent him, an' I waited fer him. The day he come out I married him. We had to dig hard. I'd do it ag'in. Now his boy's saved yer girl's life to pay ye fer puttin' his father'n State's pris'n. Two year ago didn't Bill Porter—sick an' a-dyin'—hunt till he foun' me here? Didn't he go an' swear? Done fer spite. Didn't he sen' me the affydavy?—an' I've got it safe. Got it swore to by him, with the justice o' the peace's name signed, an' two witnissis, an' the judge's red seal on top o' that. Could I go back an' show that paper'n tell how 'twas? Too late! George was dead. I couldn't go. My folks a'most disowned me when I took him. I said then I never'd step my foot into their doors. Them that gives me the col' shoulder once don't do it no more. Come to me?—well an' good. Go to them?—never."

The bewildered colonel, promising every possible reparation, would have thrown himself at her feet, could he have done so, for the part he had taken in the prosecution. But she permitted no interruption, and continued: "He lay by the winder where yer girl lies. The moon come in on his bed as it does on her'n. In the night, when I see the light o' the sky shine there where he died, I feel his sperit in the room. I moved the bed to this corner, where it's darker. I wa'n't good enough to lie there. But 'twas on his mind. He said, 'Becky, if I could prove it to you afore I died!' An' I say, George's sperit sent Bill Porter here, an' sent you here, an' sent me into this room to-night. Now, fer the sake o'him an' Markis-dee, go back an' tell the truth!"

Speaking the word "truth," she vanished across the light to her dark place of rest.

Next morning the colonel examined and copied the confession while a buggy waited for him at the door. Respecting the evident wishes of Mrs. Ruggles, he went away with no attempt to express the feelings that were uppermost in his heart.

She sleeps beside her husband in the orchard. Her old log-house has been replaced by a large white box, of which her son the marquis is proprietor. Each year adds to his acres or his stock. An able-bodied wife, whose industry and English are equal to his own, sits near him at the door on a summer evening, while he smokes his pipe, takes an oakum-headed child upon his knee, and gazes quietly in the direction of the spring and across the grain-fields where once he saw—or rather heard, without waiting to see—a forest swept down in a moment. He smokes and gazes as he sees again a dazzling creature ride down the dreary road, and wonders where on earth that face can be, and how much it has changed, and whether, through so many years, any memory of him can linger in her heart. He says nothing. But he hugs closer the oakum-headed child as he remembers the one romance in his hard, humdrum life.

CHAUNCEY HICKOX.



Under False Colors.



Chapter I.

Hoisting The Flag.



A dreary, murky November day brooded over Southampton, and an impenetrable fog hung over sea and shore alike, penetrating the clothing, chilling the blood and depressing the spirits of every unlucky person who was so unfortunate as to come within the range of its influence. The passengers on the steamship America, from Bremen for New York via Southampton, found the brief period of their stay at the latter port almost unendurable; and while some paced the wet decks impatiently, others grumbled both loudly and deeply in the cabins, or shut themselves up in their state-rooms in sulky discomfort. Those who remained on deck had at least the amusement of watching for the steamboat which was to bring the Southampton passengers—a pastime which, however, being indefinitely prolonged, began to grow wearisome. It came at last—a wretched little vessel, rather smaller than the smallest of the noisy tugs that puff and paddle on our American rivers—and the wet, sick, unsheltered passengers were gradually transferred to the deck of the ship.

Among those who appeared to have suffered most severely from the rocking of the miserable little steamboat was a young, fair-haired girl, apparently about seventeen years of age, who seemed almost insensible. She would have fallen had not one of her fellow-travelers, a lady evidently not much her senior, thrown her arm around her; thus aided, she managed to reach the steamer's deck and to totter down the staircase leading to the ladies' cabin. The active, busy steward at once bustled up to the two young girls:

"Your names, ladies, if you please. I will point out your state-rooms in a moment. Miss Marion Nugent—Miss Rhoda Steele? Miss Nugent, berth No. 20, state-room G—"

"Cannot I occupy the same state-room with this young lady?" interrupted the taller girl, who was still lending the support of her arm to sustain her half-fainting companion.

"Do not leave me, please," murmured the sufferer.

The steward threw a compassionate glance upon the pair, went away, and after a short consultation with the unseen powers, returned and said that the arrangement had been effected, and that they could take possession at once of their state-room, into which he proceeded to usher them. It was more spacious than such apartments usually are, and abounded with all those little contrivances for comfort and convenience for which the steamers of the North German Lloyds are justly famed. The invalid sank down on the soft-cushioned little sofa and gasped painfully for breath.

"For Heaven's sake, get me some wine or some brandy!" exclaimed her companion. "This poor thing seems very ill; and do tell the doctor to come here at once."

With a quick, energetic movement, as she spoke she unclasped the heavy waterproof cloak of the sufferer and threw it back, thus revealing a fair, pallid face, framed in loosened curls of silky golden hair. It was a face that must have looked singularly lovely when tinted with the rosy hues of health, so delicate were the features and so large and blue the half-closed eyes, but it was ghastly pale, and a livid, bluish tinge had settled around the small mouth, whose ruby hues had fled to give place to a sickly purple. The steward speedily returned with some brandy, the bull's-eye was thrown open, and the cold sea air and potent spirit soon asserted their restorative powers. She sat up, a more natural color over-spreading her countenance, and she murmured inarticulately a few words of thanks, while the kind-hearted steward hastened away again in search of the doctor.

"I am subject to these attacks," she said, faintly; to her companion when they were again left alone. "Only feel how my heart is beating."

The ship's surgeon soon made his appearance. He was a young, light-haired, solemn-looking German, who shook his head and looked very grave as he listened to the labored breathing and felt the bounding, irregular pulse of the sufferer.

"It is a pity that the ship has started," he said in very good English, "for I hardly think you are fitted to bear the fatigues of a sea-voyage at this season of the year; and had we been still at anchor, I should have counseled you to return to shore. But it is too late now, and you must try to keep as quiet as possible. I would advise you to retire to your berth at once: it will probably be a stormy night, and you had better settle yourself comfortably before the motion begins to be unpleasant. I will see you again in the morning, and if you feel worse meanwhile, let me know at once."

The doctor and the steward then quitted the state-room, and its two occupants, being left alone, surveyed each other curiously.

The active and energetic girl who had acted as spokeswoman and directress throughout the brief scene we have just described had let fall her waterproof cloak and stood arrayed in a black velvet jacket and dark silk skirt, both much the worse for wear, and contrasting sadly with the neat but simple traveling costume of her companion. But about her slender, finely-proportioned figure there was an air of style and grace which lent an elegance even to her shabby and faded finery, and which was wanting in the owner of the fresher and more appropriate attire. Her face was beautiful, with a singular and weird beauty which owed nothing of its fascinations to the ordinary charms of delicate outlines and dainty coloring. Her features were small and attenuated, and her complexion was of a sallow paleness, whose lack of freshness seemed caused by dissipation and late hours or by the ravages of illness. Heavy masses of soft silken hair, black as midnight, with bluish reflections on its lustrous waves (bleu a force d'etre noir, as Alexandre Dumas describes such tresses), untortured by crimping-pins or curling-tongs, were rolled back in plain folds above her low, broad brow. Her eyes would have lent beauty to a plainer face. Large almost to a fault, of that dark, clear blue which is too perfect and too transparent ever to look black even under the shadow of such long, thick eyelashes as shaded them in the present instance, they were perfectly magnificent; and their lustrous azure and ever-varying expression lent to the mobile countenance of their possessor its most potent and peculiar charm.

She was the first to speak. "Do you not think you had better retire to your berth?" she asked. "The rocking of the ship is increasing, and we had better, early as it is, settle ourselves for the night, before it becomes so violent as to prevent us from moving."

At this moment two porters made their appearance laden with packages. Two small new trunks—one marked R.S., the other M.N.—were deposited on the floor and identified by their possessors. The sick girl then attempted, with trembling hands, to disembarrass herself of her apparel, but it was not without much assistance from her companion that she was enabled to remove her traveling costume and make her preparations for retiring. At last, however, she was ready, and was about to make an attempt to reach the upper berth, which was the one allotted to her by number, when a quick, imperative gesture from her companion stopped her.

"No, no," she said: "you must take the lower berth. I can reach the upper one without any trouble, and you are not strong enough for so much exertion."

"You are very, very kind," said the invalid, gratefully. She sank back on the pillow and watched the other for some minutes in silence, as she quietly and quickly gathered up and put in order the scattered articles with which the state-room was strewn.

"Will you not give me that little black bag?" she said at last. "Thanks! that is it. I wished to be certain that I had put my letter of introduction in it. Ah! here it is, quite safe. It would never do for me to lose that letter, for the lady with whom I am going to live as governess has never seen me, and she might take me for an impostor were I to come without it. An English lady who was her most intimate friend engaged me for her. I wonder what New York is like?—very rough, and wild, no doubt, and I am afraid I shall be much annoyed by the rattlesnakes. You are going to New York too, are you not?"

"I am."

"Have you friends there?"

"None."

"I wish I had some acquaintances among our fellow-passengers, but I do not know a single one. Do you?"

"No."

"You have not told me your name yet. Mine is Marion Nugent; and yours—"

"Is not so pretty a one—Rhoda Steele."

There was something in the tone of these replies that quelled the invalid's disposition to talk, and she remained silent while her companion finished her arrangements and prepared to take possession of her berth. It was time that she did so. The threatened gale was by this time blowing in earnest, and the ship was commencing to roll fearfully; so, after securing all the boxes and bags as well as possible, and hanging up all the scattered garments, she made a hasty retreat to her couch, and lay there only half undressed, but utterly prostrate, and as unable to touch the tea and biscuits brought by the attentive stewardess as was her more delicate and suffering room-mate.

Time passed on: the daylight faded from the sky, a feeble glimmering lamp shed its faint rays into the state-room, and the great steamship went steadily on, though rocked and tossed like a plaything by the whistling winds and angry sea. Then midnight came: the lights in the state-rooms were extinguished and a profound silence reigned throughout the cabins, broken only by the ceaseless throb of the mighty engines and the noisy clanking of the screw.

The state-room was wrapped in profound darkness when Rhoda Steele awoke with a start as from some troubled dream. Was she still dreaming, or did she indeed hear a strange choking sound proceeding from the lower berth? She sprang to the floor at once, heeding neither the darkness nor the violent motion, and clinging to the side of the berth she called aloud. There was no answer: even the gurgling, choking sound she had at first heard had ceased. She put out her hand, and it encountered her companion's face. It was deathly cold, and the features quivered as if convulsed under her touch. Again she called aloud—still no answer; and then, thoroughly frightened, she caught up a cloak from the sofa, threw it around her, and opening the state-room door, she rushed into the cabin. It was almost deserted. The lamps swung heavily overhead, swayed by the unceasing rolling of the ship; a drowsy waiter slumbered at one of the tables, his head resting on his folded arms; and one or two sleepy passengers tried to maintain a recumbent posture on the broad sofas that lined the sides. The cries of the terrified girl soon brought several of the waiters to her assistance, and Captain Wessels himself, who had not retired to rest, owing to the stormy weather, came to ascertain the cause of the unusual disturbance. Her story was quickly told: lights were brought, and the captain accompanied her back to the state-room.

It was a pitiful sight that met their eyes. The young girl lay motionless in her berth, her face tinged with a livid bluish hue, her eyes closed, and her small hands clenched as if in agony.

"The doctor!—run for the doctor!" was the instant and universal exclamation. The doctor came. One look at the pallid face, one touch on the slender wrist, and he turned with a grave face to the bystanders.

"There is nothing to be done," he said. "She is dead. I feared some such catastrophe when I saw her last evening. She was in the last stages of heart disease."

"And who was she?—what was her name?" asked kind-hearted Captain Wessels, looking down with pitying eyes at the fair pale face.